Berberis' World

Thursday, 13th April 2023, Royal Festival Hall.

Nearly a decade since last singing it with Lewisham Choral Society, we were joined for this performance of Verdi’s Requiem the Hackney Singers. The Festival Hall is one of my favourite venues, and this evening it was packed. There were more people in the audience than for probably any other concert I’ve been part of.

There may be very little else for me to say about this work. If the different shade of yellow highlighter is anything to go by, there were some minor changes this time round: all Altos join the Tenors for the 2 bars immediately after Figures 9 and 94; Choir 1 and 2 join forces from 7 bars after Fig. 78 to Fig. 79. Any excuse to sing more Verdi is fine with me.

The programme has some interesting Guiseppe gossip: Wagner – perhaps following the old adage of “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”, or because his opinion was thought irrelevant – declined to say what he thought about the Requiem, whilst both Brahms and George Bernard Shaw respectively declared it the work of a “genius”, and an “imperishable monument”: their agreement about at least one requiem mass in all probability being of absolutely no note whatsoever.

Saturday, 16th March 2024, Blackheath Halls.

Ralph Vaughan Williams – Five Mystical Songs

Francis Poulenc – Piano Concerto in C# minor / Stabat Mater

Conductor: Dan Ludford-Thomas

Piano: Nico de Villiers

Forest Philharmonic Orchestra

Baritone: Daniel Tate

Soprano: Helen Meyerhoff

Piano: Cliodna Shanahan

This term’s major work for Lewisham Choral Society was Poulenc’s Stabat Mater, something I appear to have performed almost exactly 13 years ago with the London Philharmonic. I don’t remember that earlier performance, although I do recall the rehearsals, during which a fellow alto – Stephanie – and I doodled on our scores and wrote comments on how awful the text was.

However, unless Poulenc wrote two Stabat Mater‘s this wasn’t the same work. I don’t have the score from when I was in the LPC so can’t be absolutely sure, but a quick peek at the post from back then has a quote from a review that mentions a Pavan, which wasn’t in this score. The review refers to the piece as having something “sensually Caravaggian about its pained chromaticism…“

Pained is certainly a word one could use.

The other work was Five Mystical Songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams, words by George Herbert.

Song 1 is Easter, and contains the phrase “The cross taught all wood to resound his name who bore the same/His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key is best to celebrate the most high day.” Apart from the ridiculous Tolkienian notion that trees communicate with each other even after they’ve been felled and fashioned into an instrument of torture, comparing the tuning of a lute’s strings to stretching a human being’s sinews to tearing point is just horrible.

Song 2 is the quaintly titled I got me flowers. I prefer Blur’s version.

Song 3, Love bade me welcome, is a dinner invitation. I’d put good money on the fact that no-one has ever invited anyone to dinner with the words “You must sit down […] and taste my meat”.

The choir stay silent during Song 4, The Call. Following on from Song 3, this call should be to the police.

Song 5 is one song – Let all the world in every corner sing – to the tune of another (and not one that I’ve heard before). However, after the other 3 it’s quite cleansing. The altos end on a high D, surpassed only by the E in Easter.

The final rehearsal is in situ with the orchestra. The RVW was as expected: I hadn’t practised anywhere near enough, and it showed. The Poulenc was slightly better, but I finally decided to mark off several bars where – even with considerably more practise – I still couldn’t pitch the notes. Thankfully, there were more than enough altos who knew what they were doing but miming isn’t what I plan to do during a concert. Where I was confident, I sang up. It was a pleasant surprise to end the rehearsal feeling slightly better disposed to Frankie Plank and his pained chromaticism.

For the concert, the Five Mystical Songs passed without incident, bar my forgetting – at different times – both the tune and the words. By contrast, both Daniel, the baritone soloist, and Cliodna, the pianist, were superb. There was a palpable atmosphere in the Hall at the end of Song 4, a collective breath that was held until the Antiphon. I found the D at the end and was glad it was over.

Dan seemed to thoroughly enjoy conducting Poulenc’s Piano Concerto – disjointed and weird as it was -and the orchestra responded to his enthusiasm. There’d been a huge round of applause from the choir when Nico arrived during our rehearsal, and another for his virtuoso performance on the piano. It’s not the main instrument, as in some other concertos, and each section of the orchestra gets their chance to shine. I’d not heard this work before, and probably won’t again.

Stabat Mater went better than I thought it would. At the rehearsal on Wednesday, Dan – referring to the Forest Philharmonic – said “they can play it”. Well, they can – and they did – with an enthusiasm unmatched by mine. Helen sounded wonderful – especially considering she was recovering from a bad cold.

Listening to practice tracks and recordings of the work was probably counter-productive as so much of it sounds wrong. However, the silent four (perhaps five) bars aside, I felt confident, but was still relieved when I managed to pitch the last note correctly. We’ll have to wait until Monday to find out what Dan thought.

Saturday, 11th November 2023, Great Hall, Goldsmiths College.

I missed three things in the run-up to this concert: the Staff Awards on the Friday, where the choir performed in a room largely full of drunk people; the Frankie Boyle gig at the Broadway Theatre in Catford; the final rehearsal on the Saturday morning. All thanks to an ENT consultant who, frankly, should have known better than to bring their virus to a crowded office with no access to fresh air. So, having gone through several hours of self-imposed voice rest, I turned up at 7 with no idea where I was going to stand (hopefully, by one of the basses) or if any last-minute instructions had been given by Dan.

There were no additional notes, but there were two seats reserved for me. I suspect that one of the altos had realised I wasn’t there but would be later on, so saved one independently of the one requested by the seating organiser. Not everyone can always attend the morning rehearsal, so this is quite common.

To be honest, my voice still wasn’t fully recovered, but I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to sing this piece for what must have been the sixth time. This time, though, it was different. This time I knew both Osanna‘s.

The hall was packed – there were even people in the gallery – and they seemed to approve (not of my very minor accomplishment) of the whole performance.

On 23rd March 2020, approximately 3 months after the first reported case of SARS-CoV-2, also known as Covid, Covid 19, coronavirus (or, by some, as ‘flu, a conspiracy, or fake news), the UK was placed under lockdown. The announcement of this state of emergency was made by the government on 17th March.

It should be pointed out that 4 days before the UK population was advised that gathering in large numbers might not be a good idea, planes were still flying in from Covid hotspots all over the world, with no thought apparently being given to having the thousands of passengers tested – at the very least – for the virus before they returned to their homes and communities and jobs. Worse, with a disease that would end up fifth in the list of the deadliest epidemics and pandemics in history spreading faster than anything even the experts had seen, the Cheltenham Festival took place. This saw at least 60,000 people attend each afternoon, with nearly 70,000 watching the Gold Cup. Let’s hope that for all of them the gamble paid off…

Just in case there is any doubt about how dangerous this virus was, of just two choirs that continued to rehearse in person, in the first 1 person infected 50 others, resulting in 2 deaths. In the second, almost 80% of members caught the virus, resulting in not only 1 member dying, but also the deaths of the partners of 3 other members.

Needless to say, LCS rehearsals became virtual, although there was nothing to rehearse for as live performance was out of the question. This goes some way to explain the gap in posts from November 2018 to November 2023, although not entirely.

In the September of 2019, I was seconded to the job of supervisor. I mean, I applied, so it wasn’t a complete surprise. (Thinking about it – which I try not to – had I been on the interview panel, I might have had second thoughts about offering me the role). I’d been in post for about 4 months or so when lockdown happened and, on several occasions during that time, I’d asked when the interviews would take place for the role I’d vacated. It was finally announced that they wouldn’t: I was expected to do both roles until things were back to normal.

Except that, as things started to get back to something approaching normal, it became obvious that the decision to not back-fill the post might have been a mistake. A steadily increasing workload, combined with restrictions on movement, and shielding at home for the more vulnerable members of staff, meant that there were fewer people in the office than before, and those who were there were starting to resent those who weren’t. Tempers began to fray, people bickered openly, and I was expected to resolve these issues, as well as do my previous job. I managed for maybe 14 months before the wheels fell off.

I was taking everything very personally at this point and, during an online meeting that seemed to be nothing but criticism of my performance I remarked that this was demoralising. I was told in no uncertain terms that this was inappropriate and (without using the words) to either put up or shut up. Within about half an hour I was at home, in a very distressed state. I stayed home for 2 weeks. Whilst the distress eased, the pressure at work didn’t.

Singing in either choir was not on the cards. I had convinced myself that I didn’t have the time or energy to rehearse and it wouldn’t make any difference to my low mood. In that it was something I found therapeutic (thank you, Dr Parker), this was nonsensical.

A gradual easing of lockdown restrictions towards the end of 2020 led to their eventual lifting in the UK on 19th July 2021. Rehearsals for Monteverdi Vespers started in January 2022, and I found myself looking forward to the concert on 2nd April.

Three days before the concert, I got home from work feeling a bit off. I took a lateral flow test more to prove that it wasn’t Covid… except that it was. After two years of managing to avoid it, at some point during the rehearsal on 28th March I’d picked up the virus. Several other choir members were also infected, and all of us missed the concert on the Saturday.

I was extremely relieved – and consider myself lucky – that what developed was not much worse than a bad case of ‘flu. Tens of millions of others were not so fortunate. I hope the woman who used the term ‘sheeple’ as she walked into the supermarket managed – along with all her family and friends – to avoid the virus. And I hope whoever wrote that Covid was created by the US in a lab in Ukraine on the ‘please wash your hands’ sign in the toilet cubicle has suffered nothing more debilitating than a bout of gastroenteritis.

Tomorrow. 60 is only a number. None of the others that ended in zero caused such discombobulation, so why should 60?

Well, it’s the first time I’ve taken the day off work. Actually, I’ve taken the whole week off – I wouldn’t be writing this if I hadn’t. (The last entry was 5 years ago, and there are so many updates in the offing that it may be another 5 years before the next entry). To be honest, there is part of me which wants to celebrate, make it an event, mark it in some way. I’m just not sure that it’s a big enough part to make me want to make the effort.

And yet. There is SO MUCH that is shit in this world – no, in this country – that is conspiring to beat us down, make us feel powerless, that not celebrating seems like just another way of giving in to it. The current government – lying, corrupt, arrogant, unaware and unfettered by any and all criticism – continues to flaunt its lies, its corruption, and its arrogance as the price that the rest of us (i.e. anyone who isn’t one of them) have to keep paying for the ever-shrinking carrot at the end of the ever-lengthening stick.

And no, it’s not small because it’s far away, it’s small because the those with wealth – more than they could possibly ever spend in their entire lifetimes – want even more. Worse than that, they truly think that they are entitled to more. It is unbelievably depressing.

My stress monitor is telling me to pay attention.

Have rearranged the books. It’s not really helped.